AANIA YOSSA illustrates a falsification or mythification of futurity. Just Give Up. There will not be a more depressing/suicide-inducing album released this year. The black light revelation between aggressor/care-taker, hearty/insalubrious, and thanatos/eros, which constitutes the viscera of conflict, is at the epicenter of Horna. It’s been 12 years since the inception of this band (career highlights including: HAUDANKYLMYYDEN MAILLE and ENVAATNAGS EFLOS SOLF ESGANTAAVNE) and while some bands peak as riff-writers before they become arrangers – this is certainly not the case with Horna’s Shatraug and Corvus.

Horna’s arranging draws from, while also deconstructing, and reconfiguring a range of aesthetic traditions featuring the alchemies of transgression, the poetics of disaster, and sensory derangements. The riffs literally have a purpose. Even if a song consists of two repeating guitar patterns (and this is the case) everything feels necessary and complete. This is totally lost on 98% of metal bands (grinders and thrashers exempt).

Sonically, we have partially dismembered mid-tempo dronology – English doom via-Finland with a strong black metal vertebra. This all equals four tracks of manageable length. At times, Sunn-amp stonerisms over a half-pace Darkthrone beat…while at other times, atmospheric metal with a full on Fenriz machine. And on top of all this you have a voice…that voice with so much desperation…you won’t hear anything more horrific and fraught this side of Bethlehem’s DICTIUS TE NECARE

The advent of AANIA YOSSA is accompanied by the sound of rats. This is the heart of AANIA YOSSA – It is literally the soundtrack for the Yersinia Pestas curse that triumphed over Europe in the 14th century. Biologists and historians are now saying that the Black Death was probably actually a combination of the bubonic plague and anthrax…I doubt Shatraug and Corvus really give a shit. All that matters is that 75 million people (give or take a million) died. And when you listen to AANIA YOSSA you feel that fear, anguish, and desperation. Who knew Shatraug and Corvus would be the heirs of Giovanni Boccacio.